The State of Branding (Case Study)

Bynder keeps their finger on the pulse of modern-day marketing by conducting a comprehensive State of Branding report.

Marketing Trends Move Fast – Blink and You Just Might Miss Them

In today’s ever-connected, digital era, the evolution of brand marketing is moving more quickly than ever before. Times are changing, conventional rules are being broken, and best practices are constantly being redefined. With a proverbial moving target defining modern marketing, businesses struggle to find best practices and actionable strategies to put in place that position their brand for continued success and retain a competitive advantage.

That’s why Bynder, an award-winning digital asset management vendor, decided to conduct a “State of the Branding” benchmark study. The study carried the same objective as any benchmark study — discovering what is the best performance being achieved by the company, their competitors, and across industries. But the software company wanted to administer the study themselves rather than commission from a third party. And for that crucial aspect, they needed to find the right solution that fit into their unique organizational framework.

Bynder’s Need

With over 250,000 brand managers, marketers, and creatives using Bynder’s portals each and every day, the company recognized a need for a report that identified and efficiently summarized how brand marketing is evolving in this consumer-centric, digital age.

Bynder’s Goal

Conduct a benchmark study that would provide readers with an in-depth look at the current state of branding, and where it’s heading in the future.

The Search for The Right Solution

“When conducting studies in the past, we were held up by inefficient and difficult to use survey tools,” says Nicolas Deskos, Copywriter at Bynder. It was clear that a new solution was needed to conduct this style of in-depth data collection. As a software provider themselves, Bynder knew exactly what to look for while searching for the perfect data insights solution to help them conduct their “State of Branding” report. Ease-of-use, intuitiveness, and customizability were at the top of the list.

In order to create a comprehensive 2016 State of Branding report, it was necessary to have different scenarios and contexts for respondents in regards to company size, industry, and any other differentiator that could be accounted for. – Nicolas Deskos, Bynder

Due to the diverse nature of Bynder’s user base, their marketing team knew that while polling their customers it was necessary to include different scenarios and contexts in regards to company size, industry, and any other differentiator that could be accounted for. This would ensure more detailed, higher quality data across all user segments.

To get the most precise results, the company knew it would have to send the report to a large and diverse recipient database. This expansive outreach would allow them to conduct a thorough A/B email test — or split testing that compares two versions of messaging in terms of performance — in order to maximize response rates.

With the use of Survey Gizmo, the 2016 “State of Branding” report was far more in-depth and conclusive than previous reports.

The Results Speak for Themselves

We tested different tools prior to choosing SurveyGizmo, but SurveyGizmo had the most user-friendly interface, great reporting functionalities, the ability to create logic questions, and the possibility to customize design and brand it in our own style. – Nicolas Deskos, Bynder

Ease-of-Use

The intuitive, user-friendly nature of SurveyGizmo’s data insights solution allowed Bynder to draft and publish the survey in a short twohour timeframe. Traditionally, collecting this amount of data can take companies weeks or even months without factoring in data analysis. For Bynder, in the past,this task had taken an entire working day. Overall time needed to create a report that contributes to the benchmarking study was reduced by a drastic 75 percent.

Customizability

SurveyGizmo’s logic feature enabled Bynder to account for the size and diversity of their audience. This feature allowed them to customize their survey for each respondent, saving the company time and eliminating the risk of collecting low quality data.

Put simply, within the same original survey, respondents would be presented with different questions depending on their company size, industry, and various other factors. Plus, the survey was able to be distributed with Bynder’s brand assets such as its logo, brand font, and branded color palette.

Easy A/B Testing

Bynder found SurveyGizmo’s HTTP referrer tool extremely helpful when it came to honing in on messages and email campaigns that resulted in the most completed questionnaires. The tool let the team at Bynder identify exactly where their respondents were coming from, giving them insight into when to double down on messages that were working, and when to retire messages that were not bringing in the necessary results.

SurveyGizmo’s reporting capabilities were a major reason why the platform was selected, says Deskos. An intuitive, clear, and easily digestible layout, as well as flexible reporting options were essential from the project’s inception and were all factors that were achieved throughout the data collection and analysis processes. The ability to see a holistic overview of individual responses allowed Bynder to track where respondents dropped off and left the questionnaire incomplete or partially completed — another necessary capability — as they had struggled with completion rates in previous studies.

Cross-Team Functionality

In addition to Bynder’s marketing team leveraging the tool, the company’s internal communications team uses the platform to gather feedback on their own digital asset management system.

Affordability & Efficiency

When shopping around for almost anything these days, budget and efficiency are usually top-of-mind for savvy shoppers. Both of these aspects were met with the SurveyGizmo solution, and as such, Bynder has experienced a faster time to value in not only the benchmarking process, but in administering any style of mass data collection.

Using Surveys for Benchmark Studies

Bynder’s first Branding Trends project was completed in 2015 with the aim of being able to discover how brand marketing is evolving in today’s digital age, and to make predictions for 2016. In order to complete the first report, Bynder interviewed global brand managers and Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) on the challenges they face, their current practices, and where they think the future of branding is headed.

But yet, plenty of challenges were presented during this first study. High partial response rates and difficulties wrangling in and defining a diverse responder audience meant that the report fell short of its potential of having significant impact on future business decisions.

For their 2016 State of Branding report, Bynder knew that a new solution was necessary in order to optimize response rates, and account for the diversity of their audience. With the ease-of-use, customizability, affordability, and extensive reporting features of SurveyGizmo, Bynder was able to gather mass amounts of high-quality data that was relevant to the current state of brand marketing and where it’s heading in the future.

The result? Bynder has solidified itself as a brand marketing thought leader by providing data-driven, current, and updated best practices.